Fantastic Desire: Poe, Calvino, and the Dying Woman

Abstract

In the production of the anthology entitled Racconti fantastici dell'Ottocento (1983) compiled shortly before his death, Italo Calvino offers an interesting insight into the authors he valued. In light of his composition of this anthology, it is tempting to reread Calvino's own literary oeuvre for traces of those texts that he saw fit to anthologize. In fact, Calvino points us in this very direction when in the introduction to his anthology he makes an intriguing observation regarding Edgar Allan Poe: If in the majority of cases, the Romantic imagination creates around itself a space populated by visionary apparitions, there also exists the fantastic story in which the supernatural is invisible. Rather than seeing it, we feel it. [...] We can find the clearest examples of these two directions in (xii). In Calvino's Racconti fantastici, Poe emerges with considerable thematic weight, for as Calvino discusses these directions in Poe's texts, we find echoes that concretely return us to Calvino himself. The typical ... dead woman and the tension concentrat[ed] in the ... monologue, while patently Poe, are also commonly Calvino. The textual connection between Poe and Calvino at first appears as a formal overlap. Both authors composed short stories that have proved difficult to categorize, but offer some version of the fantastic. Moreover, each author has created works that present themselves as both narrative as well as inner or philosophical constructions. For these reasons alone, the thematic links between their work deserves closer consideration. Specifically, both Poe and Calvino return again and again to texts that center around a lost lover, a dying woman, and a fantastic desire. By examining this connection in greater detail, I hope to provide a further example of Poe's influence on twentieth-century literature. While both Poe and Calvino have produced a wide variety of texts dealing with the thematic structures under consideration it is, perhaps, most productive to limit our analysis to their short stories. I begin my discussion with Calvino in order to provide an appropriate comparative context for an investigation of Poe. The various short stories found in Le cosmicomiche (1965) illustrate Calvino's concern with an aesthetic desire. This volume presents us with a delightful collection of how so stories on the various scientific theories regarding the creation of the universe. Dinosaurs are forgotten and unrecognized as they wander onto train platforms and are lost in the crowd. Atoms collide in a giant game of marbles. Color invades the world to the joy of some and despair of others. The text is narrated by Qfwfq, a shifting (1) character fairly consistently throughout the collection and is noteworthy for his unstinting desire for feminine companionship. The majority of the stories in this volume revolve around the development and/or loss of Qfwfq's relationships with female figures. In one such story, La distanza della Luna (Te Distance of the Moon), Qfwfq relates a time when the moon's elliptical orbit brought her close enough to earth for the inhabitants to climb up a ladder and leap onto the moon. They went there to harvest moon milk once a month when her orbit passed near the earth. Qfwfq's cousin, who was deaf, held a special relationship with the moon. Their interactions are described with an innocent sensuality-prods the moon with his fingers and toes in order to extract moon milk, and at times solamente per il gusto di toccarli (85) [merely for the fun of touching them (7)]. The relationships between the other characters in the story are also described in terms of desire. Qfwfq desires a relationship with Mrs. Vhd Vhd, while she, in turn, longs for the deaf cousin. One night Mrs. Vhd Vhd decides to ascend to the moon in order to try to be alone with the cousin. When it becomes apparent that the moon is moving farther away from the earth, the cousin returns and Mrs. Vhd Vhd becomes trapped between the earth and the moon. …